Scott MacConnell cherishes the memory of his years at Amherst College, where he discovered his future métier as a theatrical designer. But protests on campus over cultural and racial sensitivities last year soured his feelings.

Now Mr. MacConnell, who graduated in 1960, is expressing his discontent through his wallet. In June, he cut the college out of his will.

Hey, Biddy! When you are so left wing that you have lost the theatrical designers, you might have a problem.

“As an alumnus of the college, I feel that I have been lied to, patronized and basically dismissed as an old, white bigot who is insensitive to the needs and feelings of the current college community,” Mr. MacConnell, 77, wrote in a letter to the college’s alumni fund in December, when he first warned that he was reducing his support to the college to a token $5.

“Old, white bigot” is an accurate description about how the people behind Amherst Uprising feel about you and every other Amherst alum who objects to their Year Zero transformation of your alma mater. Comments:

1) There is enough meat in this article for a week of quotes and comments. Worth it?

2) No mention of Williams! A good thing — because Williams is handling current controversies better than schools like Amherst — or a bad thing because we want any article that mentions Yale to mention Williams?

A backlash from alumni is an unexpected aftershock of the campus disruptions of the last academic year. Although fund-raisers are still gauging the extent of the effect on philanthropy, some colleges — particularly small, elite liberal arts institutions — have reported a decline in donations, accompanied by a laundry list of complaints.

3) Any word on changes in donations to Williams? None that I have heard.

4) Any speculation as to the reasons why Williams suffers less turmoil? The Administration might like us to believe that they are better maintaining a calm/happy campus than their counterparts at Amherst/Yale are, but I doubt that that is the explanation. More likely is that Williams is today, as it has always been, among the most “conservative” — or, better, “least leftist” — among elite LACs, both in terms of the students it attracts and its campus culture. Other opinions?

5) My sources report that the most common political question Falk gets at alumni meetings concerns the self-inflicted wound of the Derbyshire cancellation. Can any readers provide reports from their local events?

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11 Responses to “Cultural and Racial Sensitivities at Amherst”

sigh says:

Moral panics: where discussions of whether or not a school should continue to honor someone who condoned the distribution of smallpox infected blankets as a manner of warfare is equivalent to Pol Pot and a sign of “leftism”. And in the prior thread, where a moment of levity was attempted, patently false claims that said poster would lead to suspension and possible expulsion are made.

moral f*cking panic.

(and no, anon, i’m not going back into your desired topic of the log mural. discussed previously in enough depth already on this blog. and david, i’m not answering a thing related to UL/its desired speaker until we know their funding source and why you were once listed as a sponsor of the group even though you claim to have never given money)

Look again at what Frank posted. A picture of an armed cowboy on a horse, overlooking a western setting, with a caption that mocks trigger warnings.

If you don’t think that might be viewed as a violation of speech code at the school, you have not been paying attention. It could be viewed as an insensitive post to Native Americans and other ethnic groups.

If someone complained- at the very least, he would be forced to remove it from view.

It is ironic that you raise the specter of Pol Pot seemingly oblivious to the fact that the atheist/Marxist/socialist ideas valued by the left are the living embodiment of Pol Pot’s murderous ideology.

Pol Pot (1925-1998) and his communist Khmer Rouge movement led Cambodia from 1975 to 1979. During that time, about 1.5 million Cambodians out of a total population of 7 to 8 million died of starvation, execution, disease or overwork.

It is about time for normal folks to resist – with our alumni wallets, if necessary – the misguided academics who still promote Pol Pot’s communist agenda and display the willingness to do whatever it takes to silence their enemies.

How about John just not talk about the election at all, since he is a troll and an idiot who makes everyone dumber who has the misfortune of reading his words. The Reuters poll is garbage, totally worthless. Guess who claimed as much just ONE WEEK AGO, when exactly the same poll had Hillary up a dozen points? That’s right — John Drew. When Hillary is up by five in Reuters next week, Drew will again dismiss it at worthless. The man is a joke. Drew has only one metric to evaluate polls — how they treat the candidate he favors. If a poll is (relatively) good for Trump, he cites to it, if (like most polls on any given day) it’s very bad for Trump, he pretends it doesn’t exist. He lives in a Breitbart fantasy world whever everyone in the country hates Barack Obama, crime is skyrocketing, unemployment is surging, and Trump will win in a landslide. He is utterly and completely without a clue.

This is the perfect and all-too-predictable example. This poll is nonsense because of its extreme fluctuation back and forth, which is in no way, shape or form reflective of the reality of the electorate. Polls in the aggregate show a very steady five-point national lead for Clinton and a slightly better performance in the state polls, which are all that is relevant. Some polls have it about even, some polls have her up double-digits, but despite some fluctuations, the fundamentals of this race don’t change — Clinton up five. She’ll likely win by more than that on election day due to her infinitely superior ground game and voter targetting efforts, as well as vastly superior financial resources.

If you don’t want a troll like Drew taking over every discussion on this blog, exclude him from the blog. Otherwise, your pleas will fall on deaf ears — because that is the very nature of an Internet troll.